


Searching For Home

by inspiration_assaulted



Series: The Music of 221B [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Songfic, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:33:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inspiration_assaulted/pseuds/inspiration_assaulted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the song "Let Her Go" by Passenger</p>
            </blockquote>





	Searching For Home

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, I changed one teensey-weensey thing about the song at the end.

WELL YOU ONLY NEED THE LIGHT WHEN IT’S BURNING LOW  
ONLY NEED THE SUN WHEN IT STARTS TO SNOW  
ONLY KNOW YOU LOVE HER WHEN YOU LET HER GO

Colonel Sebastian Moran, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, had never been the marrying kind. He had a lady in Danger and War. He needed nothing else.

Then the discharge came. Dishonorable discharge, conduct unbecoming an officer. Her Majesty’s Army packed him up and sent him home to jolly old England with a few coins in his pocket from his last paycheck and a gaping hole in his heart.

Gone was Lady Danger. Gone was the bright desert sun. Gone were the heart-pounding missions with that medic Captain. Captain Watson, Seb even missed him. The guy was a mate, good for a drink, good for a rough day, good when you got a bullet through your chest.

How stupid he was to miss home! Home wasn’t England, with its misty rain and grey winters and endless cups of tea. Home was a land of clear, hot sunlight and frosty pints after a long day and the distant sound of mortars in the air. Home didn’t smell like greenery and wet dirt, it smelled like dust and blood and diesel fumes. Home was somewhere he could die at any moment, home was somewhere he could _live._

Seb wanted to go home.

STARING AT THE BOTTOM OF YOUR GLASS  
HOPING ONE DAY YOU’LL MAKE A DREAM LAST  
BUT DREAMS COME SLOW AND THEY GO SO FAST

He had thought the small man in the dark suit was his savior. There he was, straight out of a dream, promising him a way to reach his Lady Danger, a ticket home. And wasn’t it all just too good to be true?

There was no danger in the Boss’s jobs. Sit up high, watch, take the shot, clean up and leave. No racing heartbeat, no challenge. The Boss protected him too well for that. There was never any chance they might shoot back, never any danger. His missions, his ‘jobs,’ felt empty and lifeless. They lacked a certain element. No real danger, no desert sun, no brothers-in-arms.

No Captain Watson, laughing by his side one second, digging out a bullet in the next.

Seb drowned that errant thought with the last of his pint.

ONLY KNOW YOU’VE BEEN HIGH WHEN YOU’RE FEELING LOW  
ONLY HATE THE ROAD WHEN YOU’RE MISSING HOME  
ONLY KNOW YOU LOVE HER WHEN LET HER GO

Why? Why was this mission so different, so right? It was just a hostage situation in an empty pool. Was it because the Boss was in danger, out in the open? Because there was a real chance they all might die if tall, dark and snarky fired his gun?

Because that was Captain Watson down there? His old medic, his captain, his mate. John Watson, wrapped up tight in Semtex with Seb’s sight on his heart.

Seb hated to lie, even to himself.

Captain Watson was like a drug, and Seb was addicted. He was adrenaline personified, blood and death and danger in a cable-knit candy shell. He was a killer with healer’s hand, a doctor with a sniper’s aim. Seb had been going through withdrawals, and he didn’t know it until he had his next fix.

Those bare, concrete barracks in the desert weren’t home any more than the soft, cushy flat the Boss provided in the center of London. They were all just places.

It was John Watson that made it home.

STARING AT THE CEILING IN THE DARK  
SAME OLD EMPTY FEELING IN YOUR HEART  
‘CAUSE LOVE COMES SLOW AND IT GOES SO FAST

He couldn’t stop replaying that moment.

John, good, unflappable Captain Watson, cracking a joke in the place he nearly died. He nearly snorted before he caught himself. He wasn’t allowed to make noise. His job was to be the hovering shadow of death, not a comedy audience.

John snorted too. Before Seb’s sight lit up his chest again. He was beyond thankful the Boss had called off the plan, but he was left in his heartless flat without that one element that made anywhere home. Without John Watson.

Maybe he’d accidentally shot himself in the chest and just…forgot to die or something. That might explain the hole in his chest again. Right over his heart.

Was it love?

He had no answer for himself. If it was love, it was a strange, sad love. Seb was a criminal now, a murderer. A hired gun, good only for a clean headshot. John, Doctor Death he called him, was an upstanding citizen. (An upstanding citizen with an unlicensed handgun.) He had his detective, Mr. Tall-Dark-And-Sarcasm, and Seb had his job. His job was the only thing he was good for.

So why did he feel so empty?

WELL YOU ONLY NEED THE LIGHT WHEN IT’S BURNING LOW  
ONLY NEED THE SUN WHEN IT STARTS TO SNOW

John stood out like the sun on that cloudy day as Seb squinted through his scope.

Tears sparkled on his face, falling into the blood on the pavement.

ONLY KNOW YOU LOVE HIM WHEN YOU LET HIM GO

Sebastian Moran turned away from the sight of the two dead geniuses and the tears in the Doctor’s eyes and packed away his gun. He would leave London that night for the Continent to continue his search for a home.

AND YOU LET HIM GO


End file.
